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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Depends. The younger crowd may indeed be super happy with a consistent 9+ win team, since that's U-M's apparent ceiling to them, but I'd bet the older crowd would feel differently.

It's hard to fathom now, but U-M used to lose once or twice a year, and those one or two games were death. When QBs graduated, people were never like, well, hopefully we can make a nice bowl; the expectation remained the same. After the '89 season, U-M lost its coach, starting QB and top tailback, and had to play at #1 Notre Dame to *start* the next year...and still people were despondent that they didn't find a way to win that game.

That is what U-M was. OSU has returned to that level and there really is no reason U-M can't, now that they're truly trying again. With a top staff and (eventually) top talent, it would be disappointing if U-M didn't become what it used to be.

We've lost the last three to them, all by double digits (one in OT, granted). Even by the most charitable timeframe (since 2011), we're 6-5 against them, with several of our wins by a whisker and several of theirs by blowout. Where does this idea that we own them come from?

The competition is on the field. We Mich fans seem to want to compete in things that aren't competitions, like how ethical our team is relative to others. It's rather ridiculous, since it's fraught with inconsistencies and arbitrary judgments about what's wrong and right. It's kind of why people hate U-M, frankly—this attitude that we're superior because we do things the right way (except for the inconvenient times when we don't).

What difference does it make, though? The IU @ OSU game the week before was similarly close. (IU was down 8 with 5 min. left.) Does that mean IU is better than people realize? Or do we ignore that one because OSU was "looking ahead"?

So U-M was close once against a great team. We also got crushed a few times, even by teams that weren't great. U-M was obviously miles from being a good team, no matter how much we spin/cherry-pick the results.

BYU desperately wants in a conference. Their AD Holmoe is on the record saying their objective is to join a Power 5 league. The Sunday issue makes them problematic for others, but they don't intend to stay independent at all.

While it's obviously unrealistic to expect Harbaugh to fix everything immediately, it's odd how U-M fans are always bracing for disappointment. It is possible to win without a 5th-year 5-star at every position, to actually get players to perform. Other teams do.

The past eight years appear to have convinced us that unless everything is in your favor—player experience, recruiting ratings, game location—you should prepare to be let down. Hopefully this year will put an end to that.

That's a bit unfair to Texas. Much of college football used to be that way. The Big 8 was ruled by two teams; the Big Ten of course was the same way. The SEC was more balanced but Florida and LSU were nowhere near the programs they later became. The sport was massively tilted toward a few great programs because of the scholarship and TV landscape.

Also, if you look at U-M and OSU's record against top-20 competition during the Bo-vs.-Woody years, you'd see that the same criticisms could be made of us.

Magnum nailed it. When the entire returning roster hasn't a single standout player, you have a systemic issue.

Granted, the recruiting was never as good as we all made it out to be (so many of our top recruits were OL, the hardest position to project). But given how poorly run the team was in ways that were apparent on Saturdays, there probably were further shortcomings behind the scenes that we weren't cognizant of. My guess (just a guess) is that the entire operation was run far less efficiently than top modern college programs, which resulted from our staff's insularity and lack of comparable experience (Nussmeier excluded).

It's an interesting question. It kind of boils down to how you define success.

Football is at a disadvantage because success is defined to a large degree by beating two rivals (who happen to be very good). Basketball doesn't need to be better than MSU or OSU, or Wisconsin or Indiana for that matter. No one remembers that the 2013 team had all kinds of trouble with those teams—all that matters is they did well enough in the regular season, then made a great run in the tournament.

If you look at it strictly from the standpoint of which program is likelier to produce a strong team, the answer is football. Essentially, you now have two coaches who are great at player development, but only one of them runs a program that can win recruiting battles (even at its nadir).

Clearly development has been disastrous. But the quality of Michigan's recruiting classes even at the time was also a bit illusory.

A big number of U-M's elite recruits were OL, the hardest position to project. U-M also was obsessed with big skill players, whose edge is more easily neutralized by college S&C than speed/agility.

One further downside to that focus on size was in the deployment of players once they got here. U-M was never going to figure Josh Furman out because they just couldn't see a guy his size as an LB. They viewed the DE spot the same way. This was despite the fact that MSU and Nebraska terrorized us with such players in recent years. So, there may well be quality players on the roster (or off it, like Justice Hayes) who just haven't surfaced yet.

One other thing about Bo the strategist: There's a fascinating video on YouTube (assume it's Wolverine Historian) in which Bo talks strategy with Paterno before one of the mid-90s games. In it, Bo essentially predicts the sport's return to option-style principles.

Maybe, but that's assuming Michigan's Treadwell would've been the same as Ole Miss's. A mountain of disappointing high-level recruits here suggest you can't make that assumption.

The previous staff struggled tremendously at getting anyone to perform at that kind of level. There were a few cases (Martin, Lewan, Ryan) but even they were inherited. Who knows what the problem was, but the near-total lack of stars suggests some kind of systemic issue that may have stunted Treadwell and anyone else who might've come here as well.

The point about a lack of planning is dead-on. Richardson and Ojemudia also were played early in their careers, only to have the staff later say they're too small.

While this may have been somewhat because Hoke just didn't think redshirting was that important (he said as much once), they also seemed to just throw guys out there in the hopes that they'd strike gold. There's just no other way to explain playing Terry Richardson as a tiny freshman (against Bama!) and then redshirting him as a sophomore.

OjemudiaNot to pick on Alex, but why do people keep saying Ojemudia is too small? He's 252. Marcus Rush played last year at 251. Shilique Calhoun was 256. Randy Gregory was a star at 240.It's funny how we want U-M to get with the times, yet we too are stuck in some antiquated mindsets. Maybe the manner in which we use our DEs requires them to be bigger, or there's an issue with the strength program, but 240-250 isn't too small these days. Just look around.

If you mean uncommon ability--speed, agility, explosiveness--then no, we don't have that. Brian went through the skill-position situation. We also don't have freaks at defensive end. Or sideline-to-sideline linebackers. Or anybody who might be the next Lewan.

If by talent you mean guys who were well-regarded in high school, then yes, it's a talented team. But this disconnect was always apparent. We recruited a lot of tweener linemen and big skill players. This is the result.